Good news: the Celtics have played considerably better defense. Bad news: Everything else has remained the same. Pierce lost the ball twice in his last two possessions, we failed to foul the Knicks for 7 seconds, Rondo committed a couple of his "hail mary turnovers," nobody besides Rondo and Pierce scored in double digits, and the Knicks won for the first time since 2006 against the Celtics.

Let me revisit that shooting stat: Players who aren't named Rondo or Pierce combined for 15-42. How about 3 point shooting? 3-18. The eye test tells us that the Celtics played terrible offense for certain stretches; it's one thing if your shots don't fall but if it's another if you run amateur offense.

The silver lining is: Rondo had another triple-double (23 points, 11 assists, 10 rebounds) We kept the game close mostly and we played good defense for about 3.5 quarters. Pierce got his shot back a little.

But yeah, that's about it. It was a deserved and unlucky loss (yeah, those two are somehow mutually exclusive), and if we don't win tomorrow against Hawks, we'll officially be in the danger zone.